How’s the thickness of your skin coming along?
In my last post the week before the Inaugural, I wrote that the Cold Civil War was upon us with all of its skirmishes and lies handed out as truth. In most wars, truth is the first casualty, but in this one, controlling the truth is the prize.
I don’t think I’ve ever lived at a time when more lies were being peddled as the truth. And, so many lies are being peddled so quickly, I find it hard enough to wade through them enough to write about them. I need a “break in the action” just to collect my thoughts cogently enough to not sound radicalized. I guess why would Satan make it easy?
I said before the Inaugural that there was no way the new left-wing administration was going to be able to deliver on their campaign promises to the far left. Indeed, that is truth. And, the far left is beginning to see it big time.
The people who elected the left-wing Georgia Senators are now up in arms at being told that their campaign-promised $2,000 stimulus checks may only top out at $1,400. The new President has likely prevented many scholarships for female athletes by mandating that they have to compete alongside biological males, the new administration is now cozier with the Russians than the old one ever was, the Chinese are vocal about having to wait in line behind the Russians, and quite a few of the so-called “eighty million” who voted blue are turning red with buyer’s remorse because they’re losing their jobs.
Millions more around the world are endangered by the fact that their lives will be cut short—in utero—by American taxpayer dollars. Racism is not going away anytime soon—too many people are profiting from that. And science is just confusing us about everything, because though it can tell us the what and how things are happening to us (COVID, climate change, quarantines, vaccines), it can never tell us why things are happening to us. People who, in the recent election, were told to vote for “kinder, gentler, and science” are having difficulty seeing any of it.
The truth is getting to the media a bit. They are starting to realize that it’s self-evident they wanted this war for some time—to rid themselves of unreliable (spelled “conservative”) social media and networks. And, it has happened. Big tech has silenced some of it and Fox News ratings are likely now just bottoming out. But this is all coming at a cost of first amendment freedoms. You know, the lefties believe first amendment infringement might even, one day, turn on them. They are starting to realize that even a blind person can see their complicity in the on-going cold civil war. Even Bill Maher is embarrassed at the media, and that takes some doing.
None of this has had any impact on the two combatants in this cold civil war—the far left, and the left. The far left continues to rip up Portland—especially the Democrat strongholds—every night since Inauguration Day, Washington state is seeing its share of riots as well, Chicago has had bloody weekends, suddenly schools need to open across the country because COVID isn’t that bad, and the media and the White House are ignoring the whole thing. And, who cares? “C’mon man, give me a break,” the new President says. The left has the power now. And, I guess, the far left just needs to shut up and color. Meanwhile, the far left is looking for more powerful crayons. And they’ll find them eventually.
But “Right America” has even greater problems in this Cold Civil War. The right can’t even unite on how it is to be divided. I’ll try to sum it up for you.
The former President did a lot of things, but he had the impact of forcing everyone on the right to take out their neatly stored, compartmented boxes of truth and philosophy, and re-evaluate all that was inside there. People don’t like to do that, generally. They’re comfortable with their definitions of truth and freedom, even if their boxes are covered with band-aids from the rise of relativism if it favored their bank accounts and mutual funds, or amused them with non-stop immoral entertainment. The former President had the effect of ripping off those band-aids, and to some who thought they had their conceptions about their futures, their lives, and their God under their own control and neatly tucked away on a shelf, that really hurt.
The right became pro-Trumpers or never-Trumpers, and far-righters or silent-righters. This even spilled over into the Church creating what some have described as the woke-Church countered by Bible literalists. But the media and people in Left America have decided that the Church is no longer a factor, and that they have effectively silenced those who would propose to you that our cultural lines of conduct are no longer found in the Bible. Left America has remanded this issue to the woke-Church who are telling Bible literalists that they should just stay inside the four walls of their church buildings and color. The Church has heard that before.
I’ve heard way too much about Nazi Germany in our dialogue lately, but I’ll risk it to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer regarding how the church in Germany allowed an evil chancellor to come to power:
It was the preaching of cheap grace, Bonhoeffer said. “Cheap grace is the teaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
In the recent election season, prominent theologians like John Piper and Tim Keller have encouraged the church to abandon politics, embrace the social justice movement, and from Piper’s perspective, not even vote. One wonders how they reconcile these positions with Romans 13. How many bad kings in the Old Testament did God use to eventually position the people of Israel for their ultimate savior? God used them and He can use anyone. I appreciate the way that Larry Taunton said it recently, in The American Spectator:
“Too many Christians today are risk-averse. They prefer the safety of the family life center to engaging the culture in any way that might cost them something. God forbid they might sacrifice their wealth or comfort, endure the social media mob, or be excluded from the neighborhood barbeque. To such Christians, the ‘woke’ messages of pastors like Tim Keller and John Piper et al. are a justification to do what they were inclined to do anyway: nothing.
“But that doesn’t strike me as Christian at all. C. S. Lewis called Christianity a ‘fighting religion.’ Think on that. These days, such a statement strikes a somewhat absurd note with a generation that has never known war, privation, or suffering in defense of anything, much less of noble ideals. For them, Jesus has been reinterpreted to meet a lifestyle preference. One might wonder if they truly know him. Because when Jesus said to turn the other cheek, he did not mean to turn a blind eye. And the highest calling of a Christian is not to be civil; it is to be salt and light.”
If Left America has determined that the Church is no longer a factor in who gets to draw lines of truth for the culture, then I would respond with “that’s just the way Satan would want it.” The social justice movement and “woke” theologians are in no position to take on the likes of the evil one in our world. No one is.
But it doesn’t help that the Church can’t agree on what to do next. There is one thing about which I am absolutely sure. There is no way that, as our current President says it, “America will unite” until the Church unites first. Left America will continue fighting itself into relative obscurity, but the Church—left or right, woke or literal—holds the key.
Unity of the Church is the last thing that Jesus prayed for when He was with the people closest to Him—His disciples. Remaining the pillar and foundation of the truth is one of the last things that Paul told Timothy the Church must be. I’m not talking about Evangelicals, AME, Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, or any other faith or denominational affiliation. And I’m not talking about the United States as if it were God’s chosen nation or people. I’m talking about the world. I’m talking about the Church. Where did we come from? God. Why are we here? God. Who gets to draw the lines of our conduct? God. Where are we going when we are done here? God.
And if you’ve got a problem with any of that, don’t read “Part Three” next time.
Still, there is hope. The Father will answer the Son’s prayer that “they may be one.” There is light up ahead.
But I said over the recent decades that renewal and revival and unity in the Church won’t be the stuff of smiles coming down the Church aisles with bright lights, but rather will be punctuated by the cries and screams of the penitent, and the gnashing of teeth. Truth will have its way with us. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s time for the Church to be the Church, and I’m not talking about cheap grace. And if the highest calling of a Christian is to be salt and light in the culture, then it seems to me that salt must be applied where it’s needed if it’s to be of any use.
More on that next time. Keep working on that thicker skin.